The Hopi Snake Dance

(All photos in this slide show are courtesy of the Pikes Peak Library District/PPLD and the Denver Public Library/DPL.)

Each year at approximately this time, the Hopi people perform The Snake Dance, a sacred ritual believed to bring rain to their desert land in northeastern Arizona. Though it’s no longer an event open to the public, the dance can still be loosely experienced through historical photographs (mostly by Horace S. Poley) and eyewitness accounts. The narration in this slide show is from Earle R. Forrest’s account in his 1961 book The Snake Dance of the Hopi Indians.